


Two People is what's Best in Bed

by LokiOfSassgaard



Series: Sex is Boring [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-22
Updated: 2011-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 21:30:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6346090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokiOfSassgaard/pseuds/LokiOfSassgaard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Compromise, sacrifice. Same thing, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two People is what's Best in Bed

His every muscle was trembling slightly. Why? Was he nervous? He never got nervous. But he must have done; it wasn’t a low blood sugar or lack of sleep sort of trembling. It was a certain tightness that made him want to run.

He must have been nervous.

Stupid. Of course he was nervous. He was about to do something he’d only agreed to do in order to shut John up. Twice. He even had a chance to back out, but he’d been too distracted by everything else to notice that chance until it was too late.

Was it too late?

Most likely. John wouldn’t take it personally, but this was something he wanted to do. Apparently. He owed this to John; they had made a deal, and this was his part of it. Backing out would disappoint John and make him less likely to trust him in the future.

Sherlock didn’t want to disappoint John. He’d go through with this; hate every second, but do it for John. Make John happy. When John was happy, Sherlock was happy.

Usually.

John had suggested they go to hers for this. He didn’t even want to think about what Mrs Hudson would make of it if she knew. He worried that she might listen in.

Sherlock suspected he was right. He kept this hypothesis to himself.

Sherlock didn’t know much about the woman they were going to… met up with. He knew she was called Kath, and that John had apparently met her through Clara (not Harry; interesting). He had completely forgotten about this whole thing until John started talking about her in the cab. Deleted it without realising it; subconsciously trying to block out whatever unpleasantness was certainly waiting for him in Islington.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” John assured him quietly, doubtless keeping his voice low enough so the cabbie didn’t hear him. “No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to.”

Another test? Another opportunity to back out? No. Couldn’t have been. John was talking about once they got to that point. Backing out now couldn’t possibly be an option.

“Right,” he said. What else could he say?

 

Kath greeted them both by the door with a thin smile. She had dressed for the occasion, no doubt trying six – no, seven – different outfits before settling on a small black dress with thin straps. It was too tight on her, and affected the way she moved. Almost like she’d been told by someone just the vaguest ideas of what was meant to be considered sexually attractive, but hadn’t quite grasped the concept.

Or maybe it was. John seemed to appreciate the look. Then again, John didn’t seem to discriminate much.

After exchanging greetings and kisses on the cheek with John, Kath turned her attention to Sherlock.

“You must be the boyfriend,” she said, her voice pitched unnaturally low.

Sherlock turned sharply to John. “Boyfriend?” he asked.

John’s face turned slightly red. Ah. Not good, no doubt.

“We’re not in primary school,” Sherlock corrected.

The way John set his jaw didn’t bode well. Sherlock couldn’t think of anything that John might consider even remotely right. He could try to explain that ‘boyfriend’ was a rather juvenile term, but even as he contemplated the argument, Sherlock couldn’t come up with a suitable replacement.

Best to let John do the talking. Sherlock wandered over to look at the objects on a bookshelf.

“Drinks?” Kath offered, clearly trying to relieve the tension. “I’ve got a ninety-six—”

“Better not,” Sherlock interrupted as he picked up a small jade cat from one of the shelves. After a moment, he turned to see the look of hurt confusion on John’s face, and reminded himself to just keep quiet. For John’s sake.

“I mean, I’d better not,” he said. “You go on ahead.”

He waved in the general direction of the kitchen, where the wine was no doubt kept, and went back to inspecting the cat. Cheap. Maybe £10, purchased at a book or junkshop on impulse. Not part of a collection of anything jade or feline. Just one of many assorted odd and ends. A collection of unrelated trinkets.

He could hear John whispering apologies on his behalf; making excuses involving recovery. He couldn’t be more wrong. Sherlock didn’t bother to correct him. Doing so would only exacerbate matters. He was here for John, and wanted to make John happy.

Pissing John off was not the way to go about achieving this goal. Since that clearly couldn’t be avoided, it was best to just stay quiet. Let them talk. They’d come fetch him when they were ready.

He put down the jade cat and resisted the impulse to jump out of his skin when he felt a hand that didn’t belong to John rest on his shoulder. Even though the layers of his coat, jacket, shirt, and vest, the contact felt wrong. He didn’t want her touching him, and he didn’t want to touch her.

John wanted these things, though; wanted Sherlock to participate in this alarming display of promiscuity. Rather than roll his eyes at the entire situation, Sherlock forced a smile.

She looked at him with an odd ghost of a smile for long enough to make him wonder if he was supposed to be doing something. Were there expected routines for these sort of things? Was he going about this whole thing in completely the wrong way.

Probably. Almost certainly.

“John says you do a thing,” Kath said easily. “What can you tell me about myself?”

Of course. Everyone always wanted to see this ‘trick’ of his, but no-one (almost no-one; John doesn’t count) ever liked the answer. Sherlock hazarded a glance in John’s direction, needing only the smallest fraction of a second to read the warning on his face.

The meaning was clear: don’t upset her.

Kath’s face was a canvas of expectation.

Sol ution: compromise. Tell her the boring details that anyone could glean from the room.

“You’ve lived here alone for... three years,” Sherlock said. “You work close by -- close enough to walk, but further south than Cross Street. Likely as far as the A104, and if I had to put an exact name on it, Barclays.”

She laughed, giving Sherlock enough time to look at John again. His glance was met with an approving nod. Good. John obviously enjoyed listening to Sherlock’s deductions, and this seemed to have redeemed Sherlock from his earlier comments.

“Wow. Is that all?” asked Kath eagerly.

No. But John might have been upset if Sherlock had also mentioned unchecked manic depression, impulse shopping and retail therapy, and the irony of poorly-managed finances.

“Yes,” Sherlock answered. He smiled again, not missing the way John seemed to relax slightly.

Sherlock felt himself starting to relax until Kath took him by the hand and tug ged lightly.

“I want to show you something,” she said, her voice dropped back to the unnaturally low timbre. “Come here.”

John followed without Sherlock having to ask, bringing his drink with him. The three of them made their way to the flat’s single bedroom, where Sherlock was fairly certain the ‘something’ that was going to be showed to him strictly sexual in nature. This suspicion was quickly confirmed as Kath reached up to help him out of his coat.

Sherlock let her take his coat as he fought against the feeling of panic that was very quickly rising in his chest. This was not right. When John had done exactly this sort of thing barely a week before, it had felt wrong, but also vaguely comfortable. Even despite the completely violation, he still felt safe because it had been John. John, the one person with whom Sherlock trusted his life.

This woman was strange. Her hands were wrong and moved in ways that were totally unfamiliar as they snaked underneath his coat and down his sides. Sherlock felt himself begin to tense and briefly contemplated leaving before John was behind him, pressing his weight against his back.

“I’ve got you,” John said quietly.

Sherlock felt John’s weight against him change slightly, followed by John’s breath on his neck. He was up on his toes to get high enough to kiss the back of Sherlock’s neck.

“You set the pace,” John whispered.

John kissed his neck again as Kath began slowly unbuttoning his shirt, pressing herself up against him as her fingers lingered longer than strictly necessary.

“Yeah,” Sherlock said. He started to nod, but quickly changed his mind and shook his head instead. “No.”

John pulled away slightly, and it was all Sherlock needed. He had to get away. The room felt twice as small as it had just a minute before, and there were entirely too many hands on him.

“No,” he repeated.

He stepped awa y from them as he tried to re-button his shirt, but his hands were shaking too badly.

“This was a stupid idea and I can’t do this.”

John would be upset, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He had to get out of that room. Making an effort to not break out in a run, Sherlock rushed out of the flat and made it halfway down the stairs to the front door before everything caught up with him and he had to sit down. He leaned against the wall, trying to forget the last hour of his life.

He couldn’t, though. It was all he could think about. Why had it made such a difference that someone else was touching him? Was it because that someone else was female, or because she just wasn’t John?

Not enough data. Not willing to try again with another man.

John and Kath both seemed to behave as though this sort of activity were perfectly normal; something people did all the time. But it didn’t feel normal to Sherlock. It couldn’t have just been th e newness. They hadn’t even reached that point yet. She’d barely even touched him and he wanted to explode out of his skin.

Maybe he was a freak. There was a novel idea. Up until that point, it had just been a meaningless series of phonemes -- five simple letters that had been tossed around so often that he could have been addressed as any other noun and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

But here was proof. There was something wrong with this scenario, and it was clearly him. Normally, he had no problem with contact of any sort. People touched him all the time. Until recently, those touches had never come with an expectation of sex. This time, that’s exactly what the touches had been in anticipation of, and Sherlock couldn’t handle it.

It wasn’t the touching he couldn’t handle. It was the very idea of sex.

Even he knew that wasn’t normal.

He was startled by the sound of light footsteps on the stairs behind him. Why hadn’t he heard the door?

Oh. He must have left it open in his mad dash to leave.

The footfalls were soft, but uneven. John. Even on his best days, his right leg was always a bit slower than his left. Sherlock inhaled deeply and pulled his hair from his face as John sat down next to him, Sherlock’s coat in his hands.

“What happened?” he asked softly.

He was concerned. Not the expected reaction. Sherlock had expected to be yelled at for this. He wondered why, and then wondered why the reaction he received and the reaction he expected were so different.

“Too much,” Sherlock answered. He wasn’t sure what else to say.

John nodded lightly. “All right,” he said. “So, what now?”

“Home,” Sherlock answered. “Need a shower.”

“Right.”

Sherlock could hear the disappointment that John wasn’t able to hide. He realised that he’d have to do something about that before John could.

“Never again,” he said stiffly.

“All right,” John said. “It was just an experiment. We don’t have to.”

Sherlock finally looked up at him. “I should clarify,” he said. “I don’t want you doing anything like this again. I...”

He what? Was this the right time to voice these concerns? Probably not. He couldn’t think of any better time for it, though.

“I won’t share you,” Sherlock settled on.

John took a few moments to respond, no doubt considering all of the implications that went along with Sherlock’s demands.

“OK,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later, then?”

He clapped Sherlock on the shoulder and stood up, offering Sherlock his coat.

“Let me go say goodbye,” John said. “Fetch us a cab?”

Sherlock was so eager to get away from that wretched flat and out of Islington that he didn’t even consider arguing. He quickly re-buttoned his shirt and pulled himself to his feet.

 

Sherlock expected John to yell at him in the cab. But he didn’t. He expected John to yell at him once they got home. Again, he didn’t. He was certain that John would launch into him once he finished exhausting the hot water supply.

Instead, John joined him on the sofa, resting his hand on Sherlock’s knee.

Usually, the contact was welcome, but this time it was an invasion. Nothing about it felt comforting or secure, and Sherlock pulled his legs close and drew himself into a tight ball.

“No touching?” John asked cautiously.

“No,” Sherlock answered dryly.

Surely, John was going to start in now.

“Did you leave me an hot water?” he asked.

Again, not what Sherlock expected.

“No,” he said simply.

John laughed, leaving Sherlock to wonder if he was ever going to just get it over with. Maybe he was saving it.

No. That wasn’t like John at all. If something was bothering him, he shouted about it right away, ignor ing anyone who might have been near enough to listen.

“Tea?” John offered as he got back to his feet.

This just wasn’t fair. Clearly, the Army had taught John some advanced form of psychological warfare. Or maybe he was just going to let this one go. Difficult to tell.

Sherlock just grunted. John would bring him a cup anyway. He always did.


End file.
